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So I didn't write about giving the dog a bath yesterday (no more 20 pound hamster! whee!) or going to the Science Center (butterflies! indoor sun!) or the IMAX movie (Liam Neeson narrated! Caves!) or the little trip to Hooters (lame wings, good hot souce, boobies to oogle) or dreaming about ruling all of Egypt and having Russell Crowe and some other famous guy as my slaves.
Nope, no energy for that. Just another boring day in the life of the Misha.
But the book - oh, the book. Sing ye praises unto the libraic wonder that is the book. (And cast a Heal Serious on my pocketbook after hitting Barnes and Noble tonight - ow!)
So there I was, and I was sorta tired even though it wasn't that late... but I had this shiny new David Weber to read. And it was either the Weber or four Pratchetts, and while I'm a glutton, I know my limits, and I've only read until dawn once.
The Excalibur Alternative I just slurped that up and sucked it down. I was squealing with glee by page 250, and, well, step back a moment. Breathe. Calm down.Secondary reactions:
Aliens scoop up historical military unit to use as janissaries. I could have sworn I'd picked up a David Drake book a few times over the past couple of weeks with the same premise, only Romans instead of Weber's Englishmen, but put it back down again because it's Drake, and he's sort of a cold fish when it comes to character depth. (The Belisarius Series owes its good characters to Eric Flint.) So it's not a new idea, and Weber refers to the Romans all throughout the book. So I'll have to pick up the Drake book just for comparison now.
Excalibur's a rushed book, too. It skips eleven years at one point, and another four or five hundred at another, leaving you stunned for a moment and scrambling to catch up again. And yet, the time skipped wasn't really that important to the story. It had to happen, like "Somehow, Jack slipped from thirty to forty with little change. Oh, his bank account and his waistline grew a little fatter, and his hairline slipped, but he remained essentially unchanged." And bang, ten years gone, but it's the passage of time that matters, not what happens in between.
And yet, that four hundred year gap is pretty important too, and it's handled very quickly in the last couple of chapters. It's recapped, and it could have taken a few books to get there. I think it's a good thing. I mean, I'd quite happily wallow through four books of struggle and intrigue and get through the four hundred years, but they would have slowed the story waaaay down, and I'd have needed to wait years between the books, and it wasn't really necessary. Not for the story as a whole. Sacrifice a little expository prose for the sake of the story as a whole? Yeah - I get that.
So. Good job Dave. Now write me another Harrington book, and maybe finish off that March to Wherever series and I'll be happy. For at least the few hours it'll take me to finish the next one.
Nope, no energy for that. Just another boring day in the life of the Misha.
But the book - oh, the book. Sing ye praises unto the libraic wonder that is the book. (And cast a Heal Serious on my pocketbook after hitting Barnes and Noble tonight - ow!)
So there I was, and I was sorta tired even though it wasn't that late... but I had this shiny new David Weber to read. And it was either the Weber or four Pratchetts, and while I'm a glutton, I know my limits, and I've only read until dawn once.
The Excalibur Alternative I just slurped that up and sucked it down. I was squealing with glee by page 250, and, well, step back a moment. Breathe. Calm down.Secondary reactions:
Aliens scoop up historical military unit to use as janissaries. I could have sworn I'd picked up a David Drake book a few times over the past couple of weeks with the same premise, only Romans instead of Weber's Englishmen, but put it back down again because it's Drake, and he's sort of a cold fish when it comes to character depth. (The Belisarius Series owes its good characters to Eric Flint.) So it's not a new idea, and Weber refers to the Romans all throughout the book. So I'll have to pick up the Drake book just for comparison now.
Excalibur's a rushed book, too. It skips eleven years at one point, and another four or five hundred at another, leaving you stunned for a moment and scrambling to catch up again. And yet, the time skipped wasn't really that important to the story. It had to happen, like "Somehow, Jack slipped from thirty to forty with little change. Oh, his bank account and his waistline grew a little fatter, and his hairline slipped, but he remained essentially unchanged." And bang, ten years gone, but it's the passage of time that matters, not what happens in between.
And yet, that four hundred year gap is pretty important too, and it's handled very quickly in the last couple of chapters. It's recapped, and it could have taken a few books to get there. I think it's a good thing. I mean, I'd quite happily wallow through four books of struggle and intrigue and get through the four hundred years, but they would have slowed the story waaaay down, and I'd have needed to wait years between the books, and it wasn't really necessary. Not for the story as a whole. Sacrifice a little expository prose for the sake of the story as a whole? Yeah - I get that.
So. Good job Dave. Now write me another Harrington book, and maybe finish off that March to Wherever series and I'll be happy. For at least the few hours it'll take me to finish the next one.
